tijaco

a rant on some powerful tools

People generally act in their own self interest. This is quite clear when I observe politics and the general community’s reaction to certain political events. It always seems that the only time someone will really take an interest in politics is when it affects them personally or some part of their identity group. The coronavirus crisis has brought this to the fore. Countless people who I had never seen showing interest in politics or any part of their democratic duties were now up in arms, they had an opinion on something. All it took was the feeling that they themselves might be affected.

It is clear once you start seeing the world through this lens that people don’t really care about anything other than themselves and their perceived identity groups. This isn’t a cynical statement; it is just true. The same concept applies for people good and bad, smart and dumb – but the way it is expressed changes. It could be policies that directly affect them, such as a tax rise or a cut to their pensions. It could be policies that do not directly affect them but might affect their identity group. An example of this might be someone who came from a working class background but who makes far more money than the minimum wage, fighting to raise the minimum wage. While it doesn’t affect them directly, it does affect their perceived identity group – that’s still self-interest.

Then we can extend it to very indirect effects. Take the example of climate change. Many people, like it or not, only believe that there should be more action on climate change because it will improve their social standing. They do not actually understand much about how it works and so they probably cannot stand strong in a debate against a sceptic. If you are believing in something so strongly which you cannot even explain succinctly, there is clearly more to it. Of course, this doesn’t mean that we dismiss climate change activists on their face. They are clearly correct that more action needs to be taken. But the fact that they cannot explain why they believe what they believe means that in all likelihood, they were simply born at the right time, in the right place, surrounded by the right people and jumped on the right bandwagon. This will sound an extreme statement but it is true: if they were born in a very different time, in a different place, surrounded by different people, these people without real critical thinking may have been followers of the Nazi Party in 1930s Germany.

My point is that we need to be conscious of why we are doing certain things and why we believe certain things. There will never be a sole reason and a sole purpose, but it does help to at least think about why. Is it because you want to fit in to a certain community? Is it because you feel that you need to represent some identity group which you belong to? Is it because of your values? To understand where these beliefs come from is an incredibly powerful thing. If you start to understand where these actions come from, you can start to control them yourself and make decisions about where your actions come from in future.

We do all act in our own self-interest. I am not sure there is any way of changing that. But we can change what that self-interest is by changing how we see ourselves and how our identity is shaped. If we attach our identities to concrete things that we cannot change about ourselves – our gender, race, sexuality – then we can easily be taken by ideologies that idealise these things. If instead we choose to attach our identity to things that we can work towards, things we can change, things that are deeper and that any person can fulfil given some discipline, then we insulate ourselves from this concrete divisiveness. I believe the aim should be to identify with your values. This way, your self-interested actions will be directed in a very precise way. You will be directed towards something deep which you can share with each and every human, rather than dividing your neighbours based on surface level characteristics.

Identity politics is powerful, but it can also be incredibly dangerous. It can be used to empower, but in doing so it can also tend to divide populations. Identity politics will never cease so long as we hold our identities close. If identity politics and self interested actions will always continue, then the shaping of our identities should be undertaken with the most care. How we define ourselves shapes our actions in the minutia of individual daily activities, but also the activities and the priorities of nation states and empires.